An analysis of the media discourse surrounding Bill C-30 as covered by CBC's The National.

1. An analysis of media discourses
employed in CBC's coverage of
Bill C-30

Presented by Jonathan Giles and Sorina Dragusanu on 13 March 2012

2. Introduction
-This presentation will explore the linguistic features that are
salient in the introduction of Bill-C30 to the public by CBC
-By studying these features, we will have a better
understanding of the ways in which news broadcasters
draw upon certain linguistic resources in order to inform the
public
- Showing how these linguistic resources are employed will
allow us to further reflect on some of the differences and
similarities between face-to-face conversation and media
discourse

3. What is Bill C-30?

Bill C-30 is a piece of legislation that was tabled in the
House of Commons on February 14th 2012, which
was designed to enable police to collect information
from Internet Service Providers and cellphone
companies without a warrant

CBC's The National covered this story on February
13th, 14th, and 19th.

The bill was eventually sent to a committee for review
after a substantial public reaction

4. Situating our analysis of
The National

Dyadic speaker-hearer models are not suitable
frameworks for describing diverse instances of talk

Goffman's Participation Framework (1981) allows for a
diversity of hearers' roles which could accomodate
those watching or listening to a newscast

The specific configuration of speaker-hearer is
determined by the institution shaping the speech event

5. The National as an institutional
genre of media discourse
''Genre, therefore, for the purposes of investigating media
discourse, requires a flexible definition that will accommodate
both the orthodoxy of a stable structure and the instantaneous
and spontaneous activity of those who participate within it.''
(O'Keefe 2005:23)

6. Structure of The National
1) Participant structure
Newscast: introduces ''stories'' (narratives) that the public are
interested in knowing (which is why they are tuning in,
presumably)
Reporter: Corroborates the story with experience
Hearer: (anywhere from 800 000 to 2 million on CBC) – the
person for whom the information is gathered, as well as whose
opinion is shaped based on the information they are given

7. The news clips

The news clips and transcripts can be made
available to interested parties

Please leave a comment

8. Contexutalization and Reported
Speech

Recontextualization of Question Time

QT is a genre; QT is institutionalized

prefabricated, televised, and adversarial in nature
(Fenton-Smith)

Recontextualization process

Rephrase the question

Describe the thoughts/actions of the politician

Use following context to create a dialogue between
parties that separate in space, time or both
(Ekström)

9. ...Contextualization and Reported
Speech (cont'd)
‘-he can either stand with us or with the child
pornographers'
(Towes, Feb. 13,14 & 19)

10. The employment of narratives
News reports, or stories, roughly follow the framework of narrative,
as it seeks to relate something that happened to the other
participants in a conversation.
Labov's (2006) framework:
Abstract
Orientation
Complicating action
Evaluation
Result

11. Some considerations about news
reports as narrative
- Newscasters are relaying things they did not personally
experience
- This authority is also enhanced by video edits
- The abstract and orientation are very close together
- Evaluation seems to be tied up into the orientation, as well as the
result

12. The positioning of stances in The
National's coverage of Bill-C30

Who are positioned as proponents?

The conservative government, the police or Vic
Towes

Who are positioned as opponents?

Many faces including advocacy groups, privacy
specialists and the opposition parties

13. The positioning of stances in The
National's coverage of Bill-C30

What about the hearer/audience?

’we’ and ’us’

’canadians’, ’the canadian’, and ’citizens’

How are they all positioned in relation to each
other?

Bill C-30 as framed by CBC's The National is an
intrusive spy mechanism. This indexes our
ideological need for a certain degree of privacy and
distance from the government and police bodies.

14. Conclusion
Discourse analysis elucidates the inner workings
of something that is usually taken for granted:
It shows the specific linguistic strategies that are
used by newscasters in their particular genre that
piece by piece, word by word, strategy by strategy
contribute to the public debate on an issue.
Although many of the conversational strategies are
the same, the way in which they are used,
combined with the status and number of hearers
provide the CBC with the ability to shape our
understanding of the event

15. Questions to Consider
• Was it manipulation on purpose?
• How much can we say about intentionality in
this, and how much does it even matter?

16. Bibliography (edit - + goffman &
ctv)
Bakhtin, M. M. (1999). The problem of speech genres. In The discourse reader, Jaworski, A., & Coupland, N. eds. New York:
Routledge.
Briggs, Charels, & Bauman, R. (2009). Genre, Intertextuality and social power. In Linguistic anthropology. Duranti, A. ed.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
CBC (2012). The National. In CBC Program Guide. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/programguide/program/the_national
Ekström, M. (2001). Politicians interviewed on television news. Discourse & Society, 12(5), 563-584.
doi:10.1177/0957926501012005001
Fenton-Smith, B. (2008). Discourse structure and political performance in adversarial parliamentary questioning. Journal of
Language and Politics, 7(1), 97-97. doi:10.1075/jlp.7.1.05smi
Holt, E., & Clift, R. (2007). Reporting talk: Reported speech in interaction. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Mesley, W. (Host). (2012, February 14). Online surveillance bill. The National. Video retrieved from
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/TV_Shows/The_National/1233408557/ID=2196890824
Montgomery, M. (2007). The discourse of broadcast news: A linguistic approach. New York: Routledge.
O'Keeffe, A. (2006). Investigating media discourse. New York: Routledge.
Webster, F. (2002). Information management and manipulation: Jürgen Habermas and the concept of the public sphere
(Chapter 7). Theories of the information society. New York: Routledge.